I've found that FUDforum, despite how powerful it is (and that whole mailing list integration thing sounds quite awesome by the way), kinda looks a little ugly to me. The interface as a whole looks like it could use some major TLC to be more competitive looking in comparison to other forum systems

Or in fact, I can see a lot more things that could be done to improve this software in general, maybe I could help?

With your proposed layout you will waste a lot of screen realestate. The whole idea behind keeping the poster info above the post is to maximize screen usage and to keep the layout modular.

However a horizontal postbit can take up a lot of room on a widescreen monitor, and can also effectively restrict how big avatars can be made (since they stretch the top of a post), and some communities would desire the ability to have such large avatars without it goofing up the page layout.

I don't think a 100-150 pixel loss of horizontal room for posts isn't a total loss since this theme we have now is a percentage-width layout, the width of the content area is determined by your monitor.

So, I have taken this into account by slimming down the top part a bit more and compromising with a now definitively L-shaped postbit. The L-shaped area helps identify it more definitively as a part of the postbit, and gives a compromise layout combining elements from both horizontal and vertical postbits. The dropdown next to the user name would most likely contain the current "add as buddy"/"ignore" functions, among other things. Or, it could retract into a customizable "info pane" in the future.

Btw, all the other forums nowadays just use PHP's time functions to produce those actually. We don't need JS-based ones (however that can make a good extension)

I've also mocked up some design tweaks to the header layout. Firstly, I moved the search out of the top left of the header and moved it down to the menu bar below it. I did some minor changes to the layout of the buttons themselves and added a search box, but its no biggy.

Now, the biggy, is what happens below it. The way the "quick searches" (unanswered, unread, etc) is layed out is a little odd and thrown in-looking. The menus on the left for the topic list would manipulate the views (and if we ever add sorting to the topic view, which by the way should really be done, that could be a drop-down pane coming from a button like that, "Sort Options"?), and the ones on the right deal with the forum itself. The "star" would either be a button with an actual star on it, or a "Watch" button. I feel the word "subscribe" has too many connotations with paying, so I'd re-brand subscriptions as "watching" a topic or forum. And also, I don't get the purpose of the "message navigator", it just seems like an alternate search page. Those could be incorporated into the main search page.

And on tables, while they are good for stuff like topic/forum lists, we shouldn't use them for layouts.

And on the buttons themselves, note that going to CSS buttons does not mean that we cannot use icons on them.

Ok, and from the looks of it creating different colored themes should be relatively simple to implement. But would it be compatible with current themes?

Of course, if we make so many major changes to things, it might compatibility with older themes at some point. But this always happens once in awhile on major releases of web scripts. Thenagain, are there that many themes for 3.x to begin with?

Also another thing, I think it would be easier for us to advance development if we switched to use Gitorious instead of SourceForge SVN. Distributed version control is becoming quite in right now.

There are only a dozen or so themes that I am aware of and most of those are mainly modified via the CSS as opposed to any real changes to the overall forum structure. You are right about compatibility with older themes but that will always be an issue.

I would be more concerned that the proposed changes would be beyond the comprehension of the average user admin like myself, to adjust to.

As for Gitorious I could care less, I'm just now becoming familiar with Source Forge so that would be a naudefj issue to decide for or against, otherwise I'm not much into "What's in right now" if I was I probably wouldn't be using FUDforum.

One of FUDforums major draws for me is its uniqueness but I see some users who see it as a draw back so dragging it forward might not be such a bad idea.

There are only a dozen or so themes that I am aware of and most of those are mainly modified via the CSS as opposed to any real changes to the overall forum structure. You are right about compatibility with older themes but that will always be an issue.

I would be more concerned that the proposed changes would be beyond the comprehension of the average user admin like myself, to adjust to.

As for Gitorious I could care less, I'm just now becoming familiar with Source Forge so that would be a naudefj issue to decide for or against, otherwise I'm not much into "What's in right now" if I was I probably wouldn't be using FUDforum.

One of FUDforums major draws for me is its uniqueness but I see some users who see it as a draw back so dragging it forward might not be such a bad idea.

That's why I was suggesting a sort of "phased" redesign. It doesn't have to be done all at once, you could theoretically aim it all for like a 3.5 version. And about the uniqueness factor, I'm trying to keep the design unique still, but making it a little easier and modernized.

If I understand it 3.0.3 isn't slated until summer of 2011, so I assume you're speaking of this being completed sometime in 2012. But by that time would your proposed changes be outdated, or do you believe they would still be in sync with common usage?

I see people still using versions 2.7.6., 2.7.7., 2.8.0., 2.8.1., and 3.0.0. Most of which are rather established forums which have been modified on their own and I doubt the Admins plan on upgrading to 3.0.2 anytime in the near future.

So might it be worth considering making the switch in one fell swoop leaving version 3.0.3 a transition version from Classic FUDforum over to the Modernized design and look, it could be re-branded at the same time since there has already been discussions of renaming it to remove the perceived negative connotation associated with "FUD"?

I've been trying to visualize your proposed changes against the "Classic view" of the forum as it is now and it really does not seem to be all that radical, of course it's hard to visualize at this point.

Okay, but hmm, a 10-year anniversary version should probably be a "major" release rather than a minor one. Which is another thing, maybe more frequent "minor" updates would be a good idea too.

Now, of course things will really become noticable once I begin mocking up the actual theme itself. Then, the real fun will begin. However, we'd need a more dedicated outlet for collaborating on this, like a dedicated thread and/or wiki pages.

The whole idea behind keeping the poster info above the post is to maximize screen usage and to keep the layout modular.It is quite hard to design for dynamic content, you have to put thought into every piece, why it is there, etc...

You are definitely getting there, a skin like that would be better than the current one I am sure. I'd still feel that your design is still a little old, sort of 2006.

Also note that text-shadow does not render well in chrome if you have cleartype enabled (which everyone has nowadays) and it doesnt work in most IE browsers. Using .htc files to fix that is not a good way.

While the design presented in the above post IS pretty and follows one trend that is really strong, that the web should look like a desktop application, it copies the look of desktop applications from 2006. IE, Crystal for linux and the likes, which in their own right are pertty for sure, but it is not new. With new I do not mean never-seen-before, just not "modern".

Please please, do not get me wrong, the design presented is tons better than what we have, do not let my criticism disturb in any way, its a HUGE job to completely re-skin a forum. Your efforts are much much much appreciated!

While the design presented in the above post IS pretty and follows one trend that is really strong, that the web should look like a desktop application, it copies the look of desktop applications from 2006. IE, Crystal for linux and the likes, which in their own right are pertty for sure, but it is not new. With new I do not mean never-seen-before, just not "modern".

I did kinda notice that it looked a bit like ClearLooks, ooops!

Anyway, here's a new look, kinda went for more of a soft metal motif. And, I also hid profile info away in a new pop-up "miniprofile"

I would expect copious amounts of jQuery in such an end product, an I right?

and yes, I do agree we need more involvement. Distributed version control can seriously help. I think you can do git and hg on SourceForge too though. But I'm not sure of their GUI cloning implementation is as good as Gitorious and the like or not.

Anyway, here's a new look, kinda went for more of a soft metal motif. And, I also hid profile info away in a new pop-up "miniprofile"

Absolutely stunning!

Lirodon wrote:

I would expect copious amounts of jQuery in such an end product, am I right?

Not necessarily. jQuery code is quite compact. And, if you do the HTML, I can always help to patch in the jQuery bits.

Lirodon wrote:

and yes, I do agree we need more involvement. Distributed version control can seriously help. I think you can do git and hg on SourceForge too though. But I'm not sure of their GUI cloning implementation is as good as Gitorious and the like or not.

Why don't we open a GIT project for this theme? We can always move the main repository later once we all understand GIT a bit better.

I meant copious as in, we'd probably end up using a lot of javascript for this.

In the Git system, things work a little different repository wise. There can still be one "central" repository, but things can be branched from it, and changes from other branches can easily be merged in later on. Contrast SVN, where there's always a working copy everyone has to go from. And yes, there is a mechanism to create a git repository from a Subversion one.

Now, with that, its about time I begin to make more mockups. In HTML this time.